This raises the fundamental (and exploitable) error in the statement, "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."

This statement sounds very reasonable. You put two things of the same substance on a balance, the one with the most weight is greater. Specifically, if I put 10 oz of gold on one side of a balance, and 1 oz of gold on another, and ask you to choose one, you will almost certainly pick the 10 oz of gold, because it holds more value.

The problem (and exploit) is when we start weighing different things. For example, what if we change the wording slightly to, "the needs of the many outweigh the rights of the individual."

Here we aren’t even talking about “a few” but just one person. The calculus is simple. The many are more important than any individual when weighed in the balance. I’ve just changed one word really, and put even fewer people on one side than we had before. The one changed word, what we are weighing, is “right” v. “need”. Those seem close enough to the same thing that we can just move on. Our decision calculus is done.

Or is it? Do these words really mean the same thing? How close are they? Are we really weighing the same thing?

In order to clarify this, we need to look at what these words mean.

need: A condition or situation in which something must be supplied in order for a certain condition to be maintained or a desired state to be achieved.

A need is something that must be supplied to achieve a specific state of existence. To put another way, without supplying what someone needs, a specific state of existence cannot be attained.

From Black's Law Dictionary (6th edition):

right: As a noun, and taken in an abstract sense, means justice, ethical correctness, or consonance with the rules of law or the principles of morals.... As a noun, and taken in a concrete sense, a power, privilege, faculty, or demand, inherent in one person and incident upon another. Rights are defined generally as "powers of free action."

A right is intrinsic and cannot be removed (inalienable). A need must be supplied, which means it comes from an external source. It is by definition alienable. So however they should be looked at in a decision calculus, looking at them as the same thing is completely inappropriate.

Back to the balance analogy, it would be like putting 10oz of silver on one side and 1oz of gold on the other. Now which would you choose? The answer is not so simple. We would have to look at the current exchange rate, the supply and demand curves, etc. Its a completely different calculus. Thus equating the two becomes much more difficult. At the least it shows that a balance is the wrong tool to use to make a decision.

It becomes even more difficult when we think of who determines the "needs of the many" and the "rights of the individual." If the needs of the many is determined by the few at the top, have they correctly assessed those needs?

In the case of biology, the needs of the many are determined by the many, or more specifically all of the others together, each with their individual voice, not just a few at the top. It gets a little more complicated than that, since its largely determined by the immune system (the few at the top) and the immune system is respondent to the many (by a molecular voting system), so the parallels aren't all that dissimilar when you get into the nitty gritty. Nevertheless, the decision calculus for the "needs of the many" is not calculated the same on the social scale as it is on the cellular scale.

Lets look at the "rights of the individual" on the cellular scale. The cell has all sorts of individual rights, but stealing nutrients from other cells, or polluting the local environment (all things that happen before p53 is upregulated), or replicating without restriction and taking up all the available space (cancer) are not among those rights. Therefore, what we are really weighing in this case is the desires of the individual cell v. the needs of the many as determined by both the other individuals (whose needs cease to be met when a neighboring cell goes haywire) and the all the others needs (actual needs, determined by themselves) that make up the rest of the system when a cell becomes cancerous.

So in the case of the cellular example, the needs of the many are determined by all of the individuals of the many, putting in their individual voices that their needs are not being met because one cell is violating the natural constraint on their rights, which says "thou shalt not steal from thy neighbor cells, nor from the whole." Its actions will result in the death of all the neighbors, and eventually the whole organism. Therefore the individual cell has forfeited its right to live by its own action; a violation of the contract that it has with its neighbors not to actively harm them. (The word "actively" is incredibly important here.)

In the society case, the needs of the many are determined by committee, not by the individuals themselves. A committee that in this case was founded by the Rockefellers, and influenced by the Rothschilds, and who knows who else is involved. I suggest that the needs of the many on the one side of the scale are not in fact the needs of the many at all, but the desires of those at the top. They are being weighed against the rights (inalienable, can't be taken away) of the individual. The balance is weighing two completely different things, and therefore a balance is not the best tool for the job of making sound decisions.